From God’s perspective, I can say categorically that bad news is not always bad. It may sound like it from a purely human angle but represent mercy wearing a veil of time.
Looking bad for a time may be God’s masterstroke for your deliverance and freedom but we are often short-sighted and cannot see beyond our noses. God may arrange for certain battles to be lost. If you win every game, it may actually guarantee that you will lose the tournament. Some losses are essential for a strategic reset, an overhaul of the current dramatis personae. Weeping has been found to clinically bestow a clearer vision. And if you really think about it, which would you rather have, laughing first, or laughing last?
In any case, those who are surrendered to God know that they are called to worship God, uphold His goodness and unfailing love even in the face of bad news. They may have no immediate compression of why but will not point accusing fingers to the heavens either. They adopt an attitude of, “if this makes sense to Him, it should be alright by me”. And “If God allows this, He must have seen or known something I didn’t and don’t”.
From this, we can see how flawed much of our prayers are, when we petition heaven to save or exclude us from every pain and discomfort.
As the story of the exit of Israel from Egypt illustrates, with God, sometimes, going forward may require going back first. He instructed Moses to avoid the highway to Canaan but travel backwards, towards the Red Sea! This made absolutely no sense from the human perspective, because it was going exactly in the opposite direction.
A way never previously traveled. No foot marks to follow. I really pity Pastor Moses. Any wonder the people almost ripped him apart? Their fears were aggravated when it tapered off at the shorelines of the sea, flanked by a desert and mountain ranges! I do not see how anyone will go far with God by scraping His knowledge on the surface as we love to do in this age and time.
Even Moses was learning further lessons in God’s impossible assignments. In the end, after they had crossed over, the jigsaw must have begun to connect, metastasizing into a clear picture. God had secured the people to Himself, and that was because it was impossible to return, as they surely would have, had they taken the more obvious way, now faced with the virulent attacks their journey attracted.
Have you been there?
Have you been tempted to speak words you would prefer not to remember you uttered when God’s evident direction brought you pain, shame or disappointment, only to find that it was His decoy, His way of opening your mist-covered eyes, saving you from a heart break or a procession of them, shielding you from danger, disconnecting you from a relationship or relationships destined to throw you into a bottomless bog of regrets and tragedies?